Will NIH Cuts Stifle Research?

The National Institutes of Health fund much of U.S. medical research. Could budget cuts stem the flow of breakthroughs?

For the first time in 36 years, funding cuts have
hit the National Institutes of Health (NIH). While some experts aren’t
bothered by losing just 0.1%, or about $35 million, others fear retrenchment
could slow the pace of biomedical breakthroughs.

“Investigators are chasing a shrinking pool of funds,” says
Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program for the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “That
could mean many promising biomedical research ideas just won’t be
pursued.”

The downsizing follows increases that doubled the NIH budget to $27.2
billion from 1998 through 2003. Since 2001, Congress has allocated $1.6
billion to $2 billion annually to combat terrorism threats and, more recently,
a potential avian flu pandemic. Yet, as Koizumi points out, this boom-and-bust
cycle leaves research funding just about where it would have been had
the annual 6% to 7% increases of the 1990s continued.

Flu and terror are ongoing priorities, responsible for the only NIH departmental
funding increases for 2006. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases won an extra 0.3%; and the Office of the Director’s budget
increased by a third, primarily to finance medical countermeasures against
terrorist attacks.

During the boom, universities competed for expanding research grants.
But as budget gains slowed, “it became much harder to win grants,” says
Koizumi, who notes that even a flat budget squeezes research because the
costs of medical investigations are constantly rising.

Funding this fiscal year is expected to fall “well below” the
10,020 grants awarded in 2004, according to an AAAS analysis.

“If this were just one year, I could see people calling us alarmist,” says
David Moore, senior associate vice president for governmental relations
at the Association of American Medical Colleges. “But this is a
worsening trend.”

Not everyone is up in arms. “The more important policy story is
that NIH director Elias Zerhouni is trying to do something revolutionary
with the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research,” says Sandra J. Newman,
professor and director of the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins
University. Zerhouni wants to foster better cooperation among the institutes
and to identify opportunities in research that no institute could tackle
alone.

“NIH is the premier agency for fundamental research on health care,” adds
Joseph Antos, a health policy expert for the American
Enterprise Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Bush administration. “Over
the long term, it’s absolutely secure.